


Absent Friends

by burglebezzlement



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Chicken Soup, Common Cold, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, tuberculosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7829767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wynonna is a terrible patient, Waverly is a patient sister, and Doc is willing to tell some stories about tuberculosis back in the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absent Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Set right after the ending of S1, so Dolls is still missing.

“I’m not sick,” Wynonna says. 

Actually, she says _I’b not sick_ which would have been Waverly’s first clue if it weren’t for all the coughing. And sneezing. And sniffling.

Waverly pushes Wynonna back into bed and starts making plans. Wynonna needs fluids. Rest. Kleenex. Chicken soup. Waverly’s tempted to make the Jamaican jerk chicken soup she made Nicole last week, the one she got the recipe for from one of the evidence techs. It’s spicy and they always say to kill a cold with fire. But she knows what Wynonna will want: the type of chicken soup from the can with the little pasta stars that their mom used to give them, back when they were kids.

“I don’t need help,” Wynonna says, when Waverly brings in a soda with a straw. “I’m feeling fine.” She still sounds congested.

“You don’t sound fine,” Waverly says, pushing her back into the bed.   

The bed. That’s a fraught issue at the Homestead, the question of where the beds are. They’ve both left Willa’s bedroom untouched, since — since everything. There’s the sense that maybe they’ll deal with it once everything’s settled, once Dolls is back — because Wynonna refuses to accept a world without Dolls, and Waverly has faith in Wynonna’s abilities to bend the world to her requirements. But. Willa’s room. Maybe it’s waiting for Dolls to get back. Maybe it’ll take another fifteen years before they do anything about it.

In any case, Waverly’s not buying that Wynonna’s couch is comfortable, and she’s certainly not putting her up in Doc’s bed out in the cold, so Wynonna’s been put to bed in Waverly’s room.

Waverly sends Doc in to sit with Wynonna and keep her from getting out of bed and going after Revenants while Waverly runs into town. They need groceries, and Waverly needs to see Nicole, even if it’s just a quick stop-by since Nedley’s started watching his office more closely than he used to.

When she comes back, Waverly’s laden down with bags of Campbell’s Soup and bananas and ginger ale and all the other foods she remembers from being home sick as a kid with their mom. Doc’s sitting with Wynonna. 

Waverly’s got the groceries put away and the soup heating up on the stove before she hears what Doc’s saying. 

“That was my favorite sanitarium,” he says, in the kind of easy tone you use to talk about the vacation you took to San Diego. “They had that nice big porch, and they used to let us sleep out there, looking out over the trees. Mountain air.” He’s quiet for a bit. “You could see the stars at night, too. Gave you something to think on.”

“That’s horrible,” Wynonna says. She’s got a bit of a wheeze at the back of her voice.

“Wasn’t so bad,” Doc said. “Nurses used to be nice at that hospital. Now, back in Georgia, when I first got diagnosed — those sisters took the charge of their patients’ souls serious.” He goes quiet again, and Waverly finds herself wondering what you did, back in Georgia in the 1870s, when you first found out that you had a death sentence staring you down.

Maybe not so different from finding out you’re the Heir, at that.

When Waverly’s got the tray of soup and fruit and fizzy drink set, she pushes her way into the bedroom.

“Miss Earp,” Doc says, getting up from the chair Waverly put by the bed. “I was just telling your sister how fortunate she is to have such an attractive and skillful nurse.”

Wynonna’s staring down at the tray like it’s personally betrayed her. “I’m not supposed to be sick,” she says. ( _I’b not supposed to be sick._ ) Like saying it louder is going to change anything.

“Drink your damn soup,” Waverly says. “Doc, you want some?”

He peers into Wynonna’s bowl and then nods, cautiously. “I could be convinced to try some of this here concoction, yes.”

Waverly gets him soup. Doesn’t get Wynonna the Jack she requests to spike her ginger ale. She opens the window behind the bed, because it’s nice and cool out and the room’s getting stuffy. Fresh air. Another thing their mother always believed in. 

Doc ends up eating three bowls of the soup, although he’s skeptical about the mystical healing properties that Waverly (and, Waverly’s pretty sure, Wynonna) ascribe to it.

“Is it the salt?” he asks. “Were you cursed with the grippe by a witch? Is the salt intended to drive the witch away?”

“I may as well have been cursed.” Wynonna glares over at Waverly. But her authority is undermined by the presence of a straw in the ginger ale in her hand. 

Waverly’s had a bowl of soup herself, and she’s leaning back in a chair she’s pulled up on the other side of the bed.

“Tell us more about what it was like,” she says, to Doc. He doesn’t talk much about that. He’ll talk about Wyatt, maybe, and about the Revenants. But he doesn’t talk about what it was like being Doc Holliday, or about where he grew up. About when he grew up.

Doc’s slow to get started, at first. But then he gets rolling. He tells them about the fresh air trains, about friends in the next bed with rosy red cheeks and a cough like white lightning. The fear that struck you, when you had that first coughing fit where you thought you’d just about stop breathing before the cough would stop twisting your lungs. About the food and the stillness and the tricks your brain played on you while you waited, for hours on end, lying in bed and trying not to cough. Hoping for a cure.

“That’s why I mostly stuck to hotels,” he says. “Fewer nurses poking in. Nobody dying next to you.” He’s staring down at his beer. “Your doctors can cure tuberculosis now, can’t they?”

“Mostly,” Waverly says. She’s read a few horror stories about people who get stuck with antibiotic-resistant TB. It’s horrifying enough to think about going through that in a world with X-rays and anesthetics — she can’t imagine being back in Doc’s day, when the best medicine they had was putting patients out on a porch in the fresh air, keeping them still, and hoping for the best. 

Doc’s still not looking at them.

“What is it?” Wynonna asks. 

He coughs himself, not a wet cough like Wynonna’s, or a dry cough like the one Waverly imagines he must have had, back when he rode with Wyatt. Just a normal cough.

“Thinking about the things I missed,” he says, without elaborating.

He doesn’t have to. Wynonna’s told Waverly enough, about why the Stone Witch cursed him. About why he and Wyatt —

“Absent friends,” Doc says, and takes a pull from his beer.

Wynonna takes a sip of ginger ale through her straw. “Absent friends.”

She’s thinking of Dolls. Waverly can tell. There’s that quirk to her mouth that Wynonna gets when she’s planning to kick some shit.

“Tomorrow,” Waverly tells her, picking up the tray. “Rest for now. We’ll let you get back to kicking ass tomorrow.”

Wynonna glares at her as she and Doc leave the room. But just as Waverly shuts the door, she hears a quiet _Thanks_.


End file.
